Imagine your loved one gets gunned down for trying to reform a law that makes the lives of people visibly worse, and the murderer is showered with rose petals and celebrated for his actions? Well, for that to happen, you’d have to be in Pakistan, and the law you would have to try and reform would be the blasphemy kind.

Salman Taseer, the governor of Punjab, was attempting to reform the laws in an effort to avoid sentencing people like Asia Bibi to death of for the “crime” of speaking a dead Arab’s name in vain, and as a result, he was murdered. Hated among the hardliners, many of his fellow politicians issued statements claiming his murder was totally justified:

Jamaat-e-Islami, one of Pakistan’s main Islamist political parties, also said Mr Taseer’s assassination was justified. “If the government had removed him from the governorship, there wouldn’t have been the need for someone to shoot him,” it said in a statement.

It doesn’t even look like the people who were supposed to protect him had much interest in doing so:

Pictures of his smiling face dominated the local newspapers, which questioned why five other police protection officers allowed him to pump 40 bullets into Mr Taseer’s body.

40 bullets? I guess the 5 police officers protecting him were out having a coffee break or something.

Do I need to remind everyone Pakistan possesses a nuclear arsenal? Doesn’t it comfort you to know primitive, violent and superstitious morons are in control of devices which are the culmination of our scientific understanding of the Universe?